ABUSE

Church wants worshippers, schools to pay
sin tax (The Courier-Mail,
Brisbane) Feb 26 - THE Uniting Church in Queensland has put forward a plan for
congregations to pay a levy and schools to increase fees to compensate child
sex abuse victims.

Pell allegations face early test (The Australian) Feb 26 - One of Cardinal Pell’s alleged victims is dead, was charged with
trafficking heroin and denied being abused, a court has heard.

Religious
Violence

Nigeria says 110 schoolgirls missing after
Boko Haram attack(ABC News) Feb 26 - More than 100 girls remain unaccounted for following an attack on a
school in the town of Dapchi in the north-eastern Nigerian state of Yobe by
suspected members of Boko Haram, the country’s Information Ministry has said.

German Taliban chief captured (The Australian) Mar 4 - Afghan troops have captured a German man thought to be a senior
commander of the Taliban’s infamous Red Unit.

Other

US churchgoers celebrate their weapons as ’rods
of iron’(ABC
News) Mar 1 - Hundreds of couples toting AR-15 rifles packed a Unification church in
Pennsylvania on Wednesday (local time) to have their marriages blessed and
their weapons celebrated as "rods of iron" that could have saved
lives in a recent Florida school shooting.

RELIGION
& SOCIETY

Journalist interviewed religious leaders of
all faiths(Sydney Morning
Herald) Mar 1 - Whenever they came, Pope John Paul II stepping onto the tarmac at
Sydney, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, the
Reverend Ian Paisley - Alan Gill was waiting for them. And they always got
excellent treatment from a man who knew his subject and was committed to it.

Christians reclaim mardi gras (The Australian) Mar 2 - A rival to Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras will aim to emphasise
its Christian origins, with a dancing army of 10,000.